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I'm surprised, that's pretty cheap

Paying for the masks is the big upfront cost - into the $5 to $10s of millions depending on the process node.

Someone told me around $30 million for a 14 layer chip in TSMC 5nm but I couldn't get real confirmation.

No one who really knows can say due to NDAs. We just know rough order of magnitude price.

I can see $30 million for 5nm. With material costs approaching $20 to $30 a chip for mobile SoCs, you need quite a high sales price and volume for the economics to work.

14 layers is a suspiciously small number for 5nm.

It will be a big surprise if multiple patterning elimination can reduce the layer count so dramatically.

14 metal layers.

I assume it's bulk prices, requiring thousands/tens of thousands of wafers of commitment.

The smallest practical commitment would probably be 25 wafers. Any fewer and you would be wasting useful capacity.

I don’t think they need to require it - you’d be crazy otherwise because you have to pay the multimillion dollar cover charge (to make the masks).

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